Help:Style
__NOSHAREDHELP__ Style is the aesthetic approach undertaken when creating a Wikia article. For various reasons, the entire wikia community should ideally agree on how to arrange the page and the basic style of writing it. Also, as style isn't a technical matter, it's not very easy to write a help guide on it; it relies very much on the general writing skill and eloquence of each user. However, there are a few basic things that should be quite agreeable. Humor techniques Crash and burn This is when one begins a paragraph that has no noteworthy humorous elements to it. Some amount of time is spent on flavoring this paragraph to establish a fairly droll and serious context, then at the last moment it suddenly goes goo-goo wagalaga nuts like a granola bar. However, one must take care to place useful details in the paragraph, or else it will be a bit too droll and lifeless to properly hold the reader's attention. And being too random in the end of the sentence will make it annoying rather than 73h 3p1c lulx0rz. Brevity Don't take too long on a joke. Metahumor This is when writing is humorous for reasons not expressly covered by said writing, makes subtle references to elements outside of its own scope, or is passively making fun of itself. Metahumor can very well be layered onto itself to make metametahumor, such as the fact that the Metahumor section is listed immediately after the metahumor of Brevity being very brief. Murder, arson, and jaywalking This is the use of establishing a pattern in the reader's mind of like subjects - it takes at least two, and thus two is preferable to launch the joke quickly - followed by a third that is completely dissonant and generally far less serious. For instance, one would describe Dusk Gleam as being well-known for her confidence, her attitude, and her massive ass. Faux impartiality This is the act of glossing over a biased point in an otherwise cold and impartial paragraph, such as suddenly mentioning Brenden (who is a goddamned idiot) and moving on without any further attention to the subject. Self-illustration Wording part of the article to illustrate what it is talking about is generally humorous, such as switching to a Rainbow Dash-like tone of voice when droppin' hints 'bout dat mad swag o' hers. Almost all of the examples in this humor section have done something similar, but do this only briefly as a good joke comes out fast and doesn't linger. Style Third person Whenever possible, remain in the third person and type just formally enough that no one should be able to tell who wrote that part of the article. If, while reading part of the article, someone instantly knows it was you, and this isn't because you're Such A Good Writer in comparison to your peers or some other legitimate identifying mark, you didn't write it correctly. Linking to new subjects The first time in any given section, including the intro, that a concept is mentioned, link to its page if it has one. This is done simply by encasing it in square brackets, i.e. generates the blue link Dusk Gleam, creating the link without interrupting the flow of the paragraph. Do this once, the first time the given subject (Dusk Gleam in this case) is mentioned in the section. Do it again if she appears again in a new section - you'll notice Dusk isn't in blue in this paragraph, because she was mentioned in the first paragraph already. It's okay to link her as often as desired, as it won't force the reader to stop and read over the link a second time; but for neatness, do it once and no more. Verbosity Assume that your article is being read by an average high school graduate and use words that are suitable for such an audience. There are many free online dictionaries; it is not up to the editor to define words used in the article, unless they are invented fictional terms, in which case they should link to a page about the subject. On the other hand, do not use words that are especially ambiguous or obscure, unless they are the only word that fits the occasion. Rather than state "magnitubular" or whatever, just say "cool!" ... Perhaps you shouldn't use "verbosity" either. Corrections DO NOT add another sentence into a page disagreeing with a previous one. Just edit the original sentence instead. For instance, if the article says: * A silly person might change it to: * DON'T DO THAT. THAT IS HORRIBLE. Instead change it to * Signing Do not leave comments and signatures in a content article, unless the article is dramatically unfinished and you're signing to explain why it isn't finished. You're supposed to sign on Talk pages (or leave a comment.) Conveniently, almost every article has a Talk page; do it there instead. If the page has no talk page or commentary available, then don't leave weird comments on it! There's probably a Project page for it you can comment on instead. Humor Do not add in-character humor, i.e. behaving like you are an RP character accessing the Wikia. It's perfectly fine to reference any individual RP character, or show canon events, when adding humor to an article, but do so in the neutral third-party voice. Try to avoid re-using the same humor in many articles. Image captioning Images USUALLY shouldn't need to be captioned because they are images related to the article and it's quite obvious what is happening in them. Therefore, make the image captions jokes, but only if your joke is really good and the image wouldn't benefit from a legitimate caption. Otherwise, don't bother putting a caption. Easy prey are any images posted by Toko. Categories Don't use the categories to make jokes. Nobody will even notice except for angry administrators who have to clean it up. Always adhere to the rules for the relevant Project when adding categories, and feel free to comment on the Talk pages to propose changes to the category standard. The basic format of a page Let's say you were writing an article about an original character named... Uh... Pepsi Max. He is a pegasus and is also known as White Boy Soda. Please note that you don't need to linebreak except between paragraphs - I'm just doing that so you don't have to scroll left and right to read the example. Pepsi Max, also known as White Boy Soda, is a pegasus and original character. Pepsi Max is an infamous tryhard known for his overbearing attitude, flirtatious demeanor, and habit of attempting to counter any insults to his person with Michael Jackson-esque dance moves, similar to Shuttershy's fridge-lifting. Personality History Past events that take place in the character's backstory, as opposed to on the Formspring Present events that take place on the formspring In green is the intro to the page, which should essentially be a very skim, watered-down character summary for those who don't wish to read the entire article, or are in a rush and don't have the time. All the details are listed later in the page. * A relevant template to hold statistical information - as this is a character, it's . You should check the chosen template's page to learn how to use it properly. * Any immediately pertinent notes - such as a link to another article that may be confused with this one - should be placed just under that template, using . ** Notes of this type should always be at the very start of the article, and / or the very start of a section, when present. * The very first sentence should summarize the entire character's most pertinent traits in as few words as possible ("Princess Celestia is a winged unicorn and the ruler of Equestria jointly with her sister Luna.") * The next paragraphs before the first section, which should be few, should encompass the character entirely, but without too much detail. After this, any long, detailed segments, such as a detailed personality evaluation or the character's entire history, should be in their own sections for the sake of cohesion. CSS sizes When working in HTML or CSS and supplying sizes, please give all measurements in pt or em. This will ensure that the display looks the same (or very close) regardless of the viewer's font size or screen resolution. For instance: BLAH WAH WAH WAH! BLAH WAH WAH WAH! ... Will have the same padding between the text and the div wall regardless of the aforementioned settings, whereas using px would make this padding appear less with font size and resolution increases.